Kodaly / Hary Janos Suite on Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Speakers Corner remastered the recording (seen here) in the 90s and we carried it back in the day, which means that the sound had to be acceptable, if not in fact very good, or so we thought.

We played all their releases for sound and only carried the ones that met our standards, standards which have obviously changed radically since then.

I doubt we would care for their Heavy Vinyl LP now, but you never know, that was a long time ago.

When we finally got hold of a real live vintage pressing to audition, we realized that the Heavy Vinyl pressing was mediocre at best. Like so much of what is pressed these days, it’s not much more than a passable reissue best suited to those collectors who need quiet vinyl and can put up with nothing-special sound.

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Our Four Plus Innervisions Shootout Winner from 2008

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stevie Wonder Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We discovered a killer Shootout Winning pressing in 2008 that showed us an Innervisions we had no idea could possibly exist. It was so good sounding we gave it 4 Pluses, something we no longer do.

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how we go about finding them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we most often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that revealed to us sound of such high quality that it fundamentally changed our appreciation of the recording itself.

Our Commentary from 2008

A++++ Beyond White Hot Stampers discovered for Innervisions.

After struggling through multiple stalled shootouts, we’ve finally unearthed copies of this wonderful album that have the sound we’ve been waiting for. We’ve gone through SCORES of pressings in the hope that one day we’d find a copy like this — with two Demo Quality sides, and fairly quiet vinyl, it’s our first ever White Hot Stamper for Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions.

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Jimmy Witherspoon / Evenin’ Blues

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues, R&B, etc. Available Now

Not long ago we dropped the needle on a copy of the album you see pictured and thought the sound was good, but not really good enough to please the serious audiophiles we cater to, especially at the prices we charge.

As far as we can tell, based on this single pressing, Evenin’ Blues (OBC-511 ) is not an album that would end up being worth the cost associated with finding, cleaning and playing enough copies for a shootout.

We can’t say that there aren’t better sounding pressings of the album though. If we happen to hear a good one down the road, we would certainly consider spending the money to do a real shootout in order to make the better copies available to our customers.

Perhaps you have a pressing of the record you like. If so, please tell us more about it. You can email me at tom@better-records.com

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Dvorak / Violin Concerto – A Killer Philips Recording

More of the Music of Antonin Dvorak

  • Excellent sound throughout this Philips import pressing of Dvorak’s Classical Masterpieces, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The orchestral passages are rich and sweet, the violin present, its harmonics gloriously intact
  • We audiophiles are fortunate indeed that a violinist of Accardo’s skill and taste recorded this piece for Philips at a time when their recording technology was still capable of capturing the sound of his violin in rich, warm, sweet, clear analog
  • A superb performance from Salvatore Accardo, not only competitive with the best we have heard, but superior – we know of none better
  • A superb performance from Salvatore Accardo, not only competitive with the best we have heard, but superior – we know of none better
  • These links will take you to some of the orchestral “sleeper” recordings we’ve discovered with Demo Disc sound

Yes, it was still possible to record classical music properly in 1980, though not many labels managed to pull it off. (Londons from this era are especially opaque and airless. We find them as irritating and frustrating as most of the Heavy Vinyl releases being foisted on the audiophile public today.)

This is still analog, with the better copies displaying much of the Tubey Magic of 50s and 60s vinyl without as much compressor distortion (the Achilles’ heel of so many of the great recordings from the Golden Era).

Accardo is an accomplished performer of the works of Paganini, but those recordings are on DG and we would not expect them to be of acceptable audio quality for our customers. We will investigate further of course, as Paganini’s works for violin are some of the most sublime in the repertoire.

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Zenith Error and Why You Should Care About It

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

We know of none better, outside of our own humble attempt to enlighten that portion of the audiophile community who love hearing music reproduced with higher fidelity and are willing to go the extra mile to make that happen.

Here is Robert’s latest posting.

An excerpt:

Every so often I make a point of visiting the WAM Engineering website to check out J.R. Boisclair’s latest videos. J.R. is producing the most informative and useful content on turntable / tonearm setup I’ve run across, and as near as I can tell he’s at the cutting edge of advancements in analog transcription.

On my last visit to their website, I was reminded of a tonearm setup parameter that J.R. discusses at length but that myself and many other audiophiles are either unfamiliar with or know very little about – zenith error. Zenith error, also known as stylus yaw, refers to a manufacturing flaw that many cartridges suffer from where the stylus is not aligned precisely with the cantilever.

WAM Engineering offers a service using microscopy to analyze cartridges, and this has afforded them the opportunity to take a very close look at a fairly high number of a wide variety of cartridges. What they’ve learned doing this is that the majority of those fitted with fine-line contact styli, which are directional, have stylus yaw.

This flaw is not directly the fault of the cartridge manufacturers themselves. The cantilever assemblies that companies like Dynavector and Audio-Technica use to build their cartridges are made by other companies that specialize in making those assemblies. Dynavector, for instance, uses cantilever assemblies made by a company called Ogura. Audio-Technica buy theirs from Orbray, formerly Namiki.

From the standpoint of these manufacturers, this zenith error is not actually considered a flaw as it generally falls within their own manufacturing tolerances of 5 degrees. J.R. confirms in his video on zenith error that the average among the cartridges he’s analyzed is just 2.5 percent, well within that tolerance. But he also mentions that this error can in some cases reach above 17%.

After analysis, J.R. returns customer’s cartridges with shims that correct for VTA, SRA and azimuth, but he also provides us with the direction and the number of degrees by which our stylus is rotated off the axis of the cantilever. This way, with the help of a tool that WAM Engineering also sells called the WallyZenith, we can adjust for stylus yaw as part of our installation process.

We are in the process of testing this aspect of cartridge alignment and should be able to report our findings soon.

Until then we would encourage you to try adjusting the angle of the cartridge’s body in the headshell to see if any improvement is possible. My intuition is that it will be.

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Sly & The Family Stone / There’s A Riot Going On

More Sly and the Family Stone

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER throughout this early Epic Yellow Label pressing of this famously compromised recording – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • The sound is huge – big, wide, deep, and open, with a punchy bottom end and rhythmic energy to spare, as well as cleaner, smoother, sweeter upper mids and a more extended top
  • You just don’t see too many clean copies of this one around – DJs and the like tend to snap them up as soon as they hit the bins (what’s a good party without a little “Family Affair”?)
  • 5 stars: “And damn if this music isn’t funk at its deepest and most impenetrable — this is dense music, nearly impenetrable, but not from its deep grooves, but its utter weariness. Sly’s songwriting remains remarkably sharp, but only when he wants to write — the foreboding opener ‘Luv N’ Haight,’ the scarily resigned ‘Family Affair,’ the cracked cynical blues ‘Time,’ and ‘(You Caught Me) Smilin’.’ Ultimately, the music is the message, and while it’s dark music, it’s not alienating — it’s seductive despair, and that’s the scariest thing about it.”

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Dvorak – Cello Concerto / Starker

More Mercury Classical Recordings

  • Starker and the LSO’s sublime performance, here with big, lively and rich Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this pressing of SR-90303
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • The cello is present and immediate, with sound that is wonderfully full and harmonically natural
  • Some old record collectors (like me) say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be – here’s all the proof anyone with two working ears and top quality audiophile equipment needs to make the case
  • As you may well imagine, shootouts for this album are exceedingly rare. For a sought-after TAS List title such as this, we’re lucky to be able to do one every five years or so. Until the next one comes around, please consider trying some of our other classical and orchestral Hot Stamper pressings

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The Music of Leonard Bernstein in Glorious Phase IV Sound

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We think that most of what we wrote many years ago in this commentary still holds true. Some maybe not so much (the part about Shaded Dogs and euphonic colorations for example).

Phase IV, Are You Serious?

Yes, absolutely. Allow me to make the case this way. Phase 4 has the life, dynamics, and deep articulate bass not found on most Golden Age recordings. There is no compression to speak of on the album, not on the best copies anyway.

Shaded Dogs may have sweeter strings and more Tubey Magic (which, as anyone who listens to live classical music knows, is mostly a euphonic coloration), but this recording sounds dramatically more like live music than most of them in every way other than soundstaging.

There are of course multiple mics being used, and sometimes they call attention to themselves, but for the most part the stage is wide and deep enough, and the mics far enough from the orchestral sections, that the illusion of a real orchestra in a hall is possible.

The tympani at the back (along with most of the percussion) are especially convincing in this regard. On the copies with the most correct top ends, the triangles and bells are shockingly lifelike, sounding, to my “mind’s ear” exactly the way they do in the concert hall.

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James Taylor – JT

More of the Music of James Taylor

  • A vintage copy of Taylor’s 1977 breakthrough album that was doing practically everything right, earning STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • It’s a superb recording – a member of our Top 100, in fact – but it takes a pressing like this to show you just how big and lively it can sound
  • The big hits “Your Smiling Face” and “Handy Man” both sound great here – thanks, Val Garay!
  • Don’t waste your money on any copy that doesn’t have TML stampers on both sides – they never sound any good
  • Interestingly, this time around even the worst side of any TML pressing earned a (1.5+) Hot Stamper grade
  • If you are using the Prelude Record Cleaning system on the right machines, you can’t go wrong with the early pressings of this title (although you can go much more right if you do a shootout and find a top copy like this one)
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 stars: “JT was James Taylor’s best album since Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon because it acknowledged the darkness of his earlier work while explaining the deliberate lightness of his current viewpoint, and because it was his most consistent collection in years.”
  • If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1977, this album would definitely be on it

The good copies really rock on songs like Honey Don’t Leave L.A. or I Was Only Telling A Lie, yet have lovely, delicate vocals on ballads such as Another Grey Morning or There We Are (two of our favorite songs on the album).

Just turn up the volume and play the opening to Honey Don’t Leave L.A. — this is James Taylor and his super-tight studio band at the peak of their powers. Russ Kunkel hits the drum twice, then clicks his sticks together so quickly you can hardly notice it, then goes back to the drums for the rest of the intro.

On the best copies, the subtleties of his performance are clearly on display. Until the right copies came along, we had never even noticed that stick trick. Now it’s the high point of the whole intro.

Here are more of our favorite records with exceptionally punchy bass and here are more of our favorite records with exceptionally punchy drums.

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Dialing in the Anti-Skate with Massed Strings

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

I once adjusted my anti-skate while playing this very album, at the time dialing it in to what I thought was a “T.” 

Over the years I’ve found that the best test for fine anti-skate adjustment is massed strings, and not just at the end of a side but right at the part of the record in which the anti-skate has been engaged. This will vary with different arms.

When you have all the rosiny texture, the high-end harmonic extension, the least shrillness and the widest and deepest staging, you are there — assuming that tracking weight, azimuth and VTA are correct as well.

Four variables to mess with admittedly is a bitch, but having the right record to test with is absolutely critical as well. Maybe we should call it five variables.

And if I only had one record to bring to someone’s house in order to evaluate their equipment, this would certainly be a top choice. If you can make this record sound the way it should, your stereo is cookin’. If you are having problems, this record will show them to you in short order.

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